I Tried to Become a Social Media Star

As social media becomes an increasingly legit route to fame and fortune—and the chorus of voices on it grows ever more cacophonous—every girl with a smartphone and 30 spare seconds in her day faces a couple of post-millennial questions…

Be honest: When you read about people like Jen Selter—the social-media fitness queen who amassed nearly 3 million Instagram followers just by posting pictures of her own shapely derriere, which led to a deal to create her own line of workout equipment, which led to her being dubbed "the next Jillian Michaels"—does even a tiny part of you think, "What's the big deal? I could do that!" And when you saw Michelle Phan's recent barrage of commercials for YouTube, did you not, even for a second, pause from trying to calculate exactly what a gig like that might pay—let's see…a 60-second spot, prime-time TV, three times an hour—and say to yourself: "Wait, I like makeup. I have an iPhone. Why couldn't I do that?" Of course you did. I used to, too.

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The truth is I have an odd, if not unusual, relationship with social media. As a writer, I have used it professionally to promote projects I've worked on, with some success. But my personal use is limited. I have an Instagram account (followers: 29), but I don't have the password for it. (My friends made the account and then never gave me the password. This is the kind of thing they like to do to me.) I have a Twitter handle (followers: 1,980, because I do have the password), but I use it only in a sporadic and somewhat impersonal way (sample tweet: "If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee."—Abraham Lincoln). The primary reasons for this are fairly simple: I hate opining, so I can't tweet. Selfies make me look like I have gout—and gout's only good for a seventeenth-century engraving—so I can't Instagram.

Beyond that, though, I do wonder: What does it mean to become Internet famous? Is it fundamentally different from other types of fame? Every week there seems to be another scientific study backing up fairly commonsense doubts about the whole enterprise: that the excessive posting of selfies can alienate friends and loved ones and decrease intimacy. That high numbers of Facebook friends and a proclivity for obsessive Twitter posting are both red flags of narcissism. I look at the feeds of people who share every detail of their personal lives and think: Is that your life, or is it just a curated illusion of the one you want me to think you lead? What happens to a person when her life becomes more aesthetic than authentic?

A few months ago, I decided to find out. I couldn't be me (I'm too boring), so I needed an avatar, one with a more photogenic existence and fewer inhibitions. I invented Phaedra von Steubben: a fashion girl of the Instagram variety who also has a thriving Twitter presence along the lines of Garance Doré's or Chiara Ferragni's. Phaedra's world is a pastiche of every known Instagram cliché: brand-name outfits, expensive travel, Chanel, donuts, felines. Phaedra attends fashion week in some vague amateur capacity. According to her Instagram bio, she "grew up between Heathrow and JFK." She kind of sucks.

And she's a hot commodity, in theory, at least. According to Brian DiFeo, a co-founder of Mobile Media Lab, which matches brands with stars of the social-media world, companies pay well-known Instagrammers (those with 10,000-plus followers) anywhere from $200 to more than $2,000 to post a single sponsored image. Off the record, a staffer from a top fashion blog (Instagram followers: 400,000) tells me she can make $10,000 to $50,000 on such "brand partnerships"—and that $10K buys the brand just one or two Insta-posts. Beyond that, getting a social star to disclose just how much money she makes for "liking" this bag or that shoe is like asking her to confess that in actuality she lives in a studio apartment and dines on Chipotle—too much truth is bad for the brand doing the hiring as well as the one doing the Instagramming.

To get started, I call Gary Vaynerchuk (Twitter followers: 1.05 million), social-media consultant to companies such as GE and Hasbro, a man The New York Times has called "a master at promoting himself." Vaynerchuk advocates a "jab, jab, jab, right hook" approach to social media: He gives his followers "value" up front by answering questions and providing advice. Then he self-promotes. That's the right hook.

I also call upon art director Bri Emery, founder of the blog DesignLoveFest, who leads sold-out Photoshop boot camps for bloggers around the world. To up my Insta-game, she advises me to take photography seriously; rather than snapping and posting willy-nilly, I should compose and craft shots, take many pictures of each subject and review the best in mini form on my phone, and invest in a photo-editing app such as Afterlight. "People really connect to the human aspect of how you talk to them online," Emery tells me, which probably means I should stop tweeting about Abraham Lincoln.

The first offline step in my transformation is to attend New York Fashion Week dressed as Phaedra, i.e., glamorously and outrageously in a way that will attract street-style photographers. In order to stand out, Phaedra wears only monochromatic, borderline insane-looking outfits. For her debut, I assemble a white Simone Rocha coat, a stiff white crinoline petticoat, white tights, white Tod's loafers, and a pile of Chanel pearls.

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Remember the polar vortex? The big day dawns, clear and phenomenally cold. At Lincoln Center a little before 9 a.m., my Simone Rocha coat—neoprene, pearl studded—is the functional equivalent of a T-shirt on the tundra. But it must be doing the trick, because I get photographed a lot: on the sidewalk outside Bibhu Mohapatra; in the tents on the E! channel's GlamCam 360; sitting in the audience at Nanette Lepore. It's an incredible feeling, getting attention for no reason.

On day two (red patent leather baseball jacket, tiny red leather jockey cap, red tights, red open-toe shoes) I may not be able to walk, exactly—my shoes just glide along on the ice, and a man has to carry me to a taxi—but professional-looking bloggers snap my photo with long-range lenses.

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Yet despite my heroic sacrifices in inclement weather, my brave monotones, I do not end up on any blogs, and I never spot myself anywhere on a street-style anything. I remain decidedly unviral.

So I keep posting. I co-opt my editor's cute cat and rename her Racquela (cat in silk scarf: "Racquela does her best Grace Kelly"; cat in bed: "Racquela is always lounging in #frette").

From the comfort of my living room, I pretend to be at various international fashion weeks and tweet about spotting Anna Dello Russo "IRL" in Milan and seeing the Eiffel Tower "at 3 a.m." I hashtag the crap out of everything (#pfw #pfw14 #parisfashionweek #citygirl???).

I invent a horrible French boyfriend, Pierre. Everyone cool has a French boyfriend now—Mary-Kate Olsen, Scarlett Johansson. Phaedra's French boyfriend has the worst opinions of all time (sample opinion: "Terry Richardson is an artist who needs to feel free to do his art"). Pierre is a DJ who loves minimalist techno, is "obsessed" with art galleries, and is always sending Phaedra macarons, her least favorite cookie. I'm hoping Pierre will irritate people into engaging with @phaedravon or at least into ridiculing her, but like an actual bad boyfriend, Pierre is dead weight. He does nothing for Phaedra's numbers.

I try on jewelry at Alexis Bittar and tag it #alexisbittarny and #anotherday-anothermanicure—a humble brag in the classic Internet style! But @alexisbittarny fails to "like" my picture. I'm beginning to realize this is partially or entirely my fault. I try to shoot simple, graphic, colorful pictures, but mine are always slightly wobbly. When I photograph my manicure, it's not against a salvaged-wood table or near a beautiful cappuccino. It's just my hand on a gray wall. Turns out it takes a certain narrative visual sense to make your point of view matter in a world of people doing the same things.

Jenna Menking, a founder of social-media management company Black Sheep, which specializes in making people like Ariana Grande and Paris Hilton go viral, gives it to me straight: Twee, adoring shots of logos and pastries might have gotten me some attention in the dark ages of 2010, way back when Instagram was launched, but today they get lost in the sea of 200 million users. The one thing that would throw me a life preserver at this point? "You'd have to have a celebrity onboard," she tells me sadly.

There's always the option of buying followers. For $39.99, the website Social-Roar will provide me with a digital army of 5,000 in 10 minutes. Problem is, enlisting these robot followers is a dead giveaway that you're a fake. Robots can't engage—yet. "I know people that have 10,000 followers that only get 21 likes," says Mobile Media Lab's DiFeo. "That means they bought their followers."

In six weeks, I tweeted 214 times, accruing 152 followers. I posted 94 photos and was followed by 83 people. And in attempting to master the medium, I found myself falling into its biggest trap—eyeing other people's Instagrams with barely disguised envy. How did everyone else get beautiful bags and clothes when I had to post pictures of someone else's cat? Retiring Phaedra was an immense relief. And now, when I read about the Jen Selters of the world, I feel immense respect. Because maybe it's easier to be famous now than ever before. But I suspect it's not.